Understanding and controlling the effect of lossy raw data compression on CT images

The requirements for raw data transmission through a CT scanner slip ring, through the computation system, and for storage of raw CT data can be quite challenging as scanners continue to increase in speed and to collect more data per rotation. Although lossy compression greatly mitigates this problem, users must be cautious about how errors introduced manifest themselves in the reconstructed images. This paper describes two simple yet effective methods for controlling the effect of errors in raw data compression and describe the impact of each stage on the image errors. A CT system simulator (CATSIM, GE Global Research Center, Niskayuna, NY) was used to generate raw CT datasets that simulate different regions of human anatomy. The raw data are digitized by a 20-bit ADC and companded by a log compander. Lossy compression is performed by quantization and is followed by JPEG-LS (lossless), which takes advantage of the correlations between neighboring measurements in the sinogram. Error feedback, a previously proposed method that controls the spatial distribution of reconstructed image errors, and projection filtering, a newly proposed method that takes advantage of the filtered backprojection reconstruction process, are applied independently (and combined) to study their intended impact on the control and behavior of the additional noise due to the compression methods used. The log compander and the projection filtering method considerably reduce image error levels, while error feedback pushes image errors toward the periphery of the field of view. The results for the images are a compression ratio (CR) of 3 that keeps peak compression errors under 1 HU and a CR of 9 that increases image noise by only 1 HU in common CT applications. Lossy compression can substantially reduce raw CT data size at low computational cost. The proposed methods have the flexibility to operate at a wide range of compression ratios and produce predictable, object-independent, and often imperceptible image artifacts.